Ruminant animals, including cattle, sheep, giraffe, deer, goat, bison and camels, and more particularly cattle and sheep, comprise an important group of animals that require periodic administration of medicines and nutrients. The medicines and nutrients are administered for the treatment and alleviation of various conditions, and for better health. Ruminants have a complex three or four compartment stomach. The rumen, the largest of the stomach compartments serves as an important location for receiving and passing medicines and nutrients into other compartments, including the abomasum and the intestine.
Presently, ruminants are treated by repeated administrations of medicines and nutrients at frequent time intervals. This form of treatment is inconvenient and expensive, and it does not lend itself to good reliable therapy. Additionally, medicines and nutrients are orally administered in the form of a bolus to ruminants. However, this form of therapy, like the repeated dose mode of administration, also does not lend itself to acceptable therapy. That is, ruminants regurgitate what they swallow, they chew their cuds, and they spit out conventional boluses quickly after administration.
There is therefore, in view of the above presentation, a pressing need for use in ruminant therapy for a therapeutic delivery system, that after a single administration efficiently administers medicines and nutrients over a prolonged period of time. There is also a pressing need for a therapeutic delivery system for prolongedly releasing a medicine or a nutrient at a controlled rate in the rumen, by a delivery system that is easily swallowed by the ruminant and remains in the rumen for a long period of time without being regurgitated or otherwise eliminated from the rumen.